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 Periodical article |
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| Title: | From Slavery to Sharecropper in the French Soudan: An Effort at Controlled Social Change |
| Author: | Klein, Martin A. |
| Year: | 1983 |
| Periodical: | Itinerario: European Journal of Overseas History |
| Volume: | 7 |
| Issue: | 2 |
| Pages: | 102-115 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic terms: | Mali France |
| Subjects: | colonialism abolition of slavery History and Exploration Labor and Employment Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Economics and Trade |
| Abstract: | At the time of conquest, one of the major problems facing the French colonial administration was the massive number of slaves in West Africa. In some districts, they were as much as three fourth of the population. Early on, the slave trade was restricted. Slavery itself was a more complex problem. The administration wanted to ignore, or at best, regulage it, but from the first, the issue threatened embarrassment at home and social conflict in the colonies. In 1905 a comprehensive law was brought cut dealing with alienation of individual liberty and slave trading. The same year William Ponty, Lieutenant Governor of Haut Senegal Niger, authorized the return home of slaves, although local administration objected. In the succeding years, there was a massive exodus of slave from societies all over French West Africa. Ponty encouraged the exodus but even he was convinced that the exodus of slaves would be disastrous in some areas. The most important of such area was Macina where the Fulbe rulers and borders depended for rice on the Rimaibé (slaves born in the society). This article describes the process of social change of the Rimaibé from slave to sharecropper. Map, notes. |
